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rrossman2 writes "Qualcomm has issued a press release revealing it has started shipping new dual-core Snapdragon chipsets. These chipsets run each core at up to 1.2GHz, include a GPU that supports 2D/3D acceleration engines for Open GLES 2.0 and Open VG 1.1, 1080p video encode/decode, dedicated low-power audio engine, integrated low-power GPS, and support for 24-bit WXGA 1280x800 resolution displays. These chipsets come in two variants, the MSM8260 for HSPA+ and the MSM8660 for multi-mode HSPA+/CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev B. The press release also lists QSD8672 as a third-gen chipset like the two mentioned, but doesn't go into any detail of what its role is. With this announcement of shipping chipsets, how long until HTC makes a super smartphone?"

...Already done. OSU student-developed Ultra-Mobile PC [oregonstate.edu] based on a 500MHz ARM Cortex-A8. Now playing Doom II [youtube.com] on a campus near me. Not too bad, since when I went to OSU a dozen years ago I had to buy my own $2000 Pentium 75Mhz machine to do computer sci on...

You can improve ARM code density using the Thumb extension, but it's the variable instruction cycle length that kills x86. Pipelining, branch prediction, etc, is much easier with RISC.

The ARM architecture is far superior to the x86 which is why one of the most competitive markets, mobile phones, has moved there. ARM has consolidated there as they do not have the marketing or R&D budget to take on Intel head to head. The margins have been much higher with desktop CPUs, with marketing and playing the GHz game driving sales more than processor efficiency.

Once ARM processors take over the netbook market, there will then be an incentive to increase their maximum raw performance. The server market would be the next target. However, they are unlikely to challenge the desktop market any time soon. Intel is cash-rich enough to dump processors onto the market at as loss if necessary to drive them out. Shame, as my ARM-based desktop machine was incredibly fast.

The Z80 was a major improvement over the 8080 that it was derived from. It became the most popular 8-bit CPU, and still sells millions every year in variants such as the eZ80 and Z8 microcontrollers.

The 8086 was an extension of the 8080, and thus inherited all of its limitations as well, and they held x86 back for a long time. As you say, a new design, the 68000, was far more pleasurable to use.

However where the 8080 succeeded was being the fourth major Intel CPU design (4004, 8008, 4040, 8080) which gave Intel a massive amount of developer feedback as to what the essential operations they needed to support in their CPU were.

As for "Reduced" in RISC, it actually stands for "Simplified", meaning orthogonal instructions, a reduced number of instruction formats, and so on.

There's already rumors of Android phones running these chips in the works. Meaning, now that the chip is officially released, it really might not be long until we get the an Android phone with the chip. Quite possibly not long at all after Apple releases their iPhone 4. Hell, HTC has definitely been rumoring a 1.5GHz phone for a little bit now (which looking at Wikipedia, that's a 1.5GHz dual core, though I don't know that for sure). Originally rumored to be 4G with WiMax on Sprint, though now the rumor's shifting to it being on Verizon (maybe it'll be both?). Apple needs to ride their "better" user interface to stay alive in the next couple of years, unless they can really step it up to the speed that Android phones are catching up and surpassing in hardware specifications. Hell, the Nexus One has been out for a while with higher hardware specs, and the iPhone 4 is catching up to that. The only rumors I've heard of the iPhone 4 though is 1GHz single core, speaking specifically of the CPU. That's looking like it's going to be behind the market pretty fast, now.

You're thinking of a processor which is a single-chip solution combining a ARM applications SoC(apps proc) and a specialized DSP(comms proc) that communicates with the radio transceiver. These are not considered dual core as the apps processor treats the comms processor as a special hardware peripheral. The DSP cannot see SoC interrupts or the apps cache as it is only intended to implement the radio algorithms.

dont know about those other phones but evo kicks the ever loving crap out of the iphone. Got mine friday and the hype is real. Battery life is fine, speed is excellent and the best part is when I drop my home inet connection i'll actually be paying the same monthly rate while still having this phone, faster speed at home and a mobile hotspot.

I went from $60 inet bill + $40 unlimited voice/text a month (no data on the phone)
to 109 bucks for unlimited data in my pocket, at home, anywhere, while having this lil gadget to play with for $10 more a month (well not really seeing i get a 13% discount so i actually break even)

for you google voice users there is a perk to give you unlimited calling. just gotta check some forums. Tons of iphone users are switching I'm not sure iphones are king of the hill anymore as a device and certainly not with att